Karen Chisholm
Started this ebook last night - awake much later than I should have been as a result which is always an interesting sign....
From the Blurb:
She lies in an Afghani prison cell, disowned by the CIA and regularly tortured. Seven months into her prison term, a lone operator stages a daring extraction. But who is Decker, the mysterious man behind her rescue?
Karen Chisholm
I will confess I'm struggling to get interested in "yet another Mafia story", but this book does have Fitzgerald flagged as "filling the gap left by Michael Dibdin" so we press on.
From the Blurb:
When magistrate Matteo Arconti's namesake, an insurance man from Milan, is found dead outside the court buildings in Piazzo Clodio, it's a clear warning to the authorities in Rome - a message of defiance and intimidation.
Karen Chisholm
Sometimes a lurgy is a very good thing, although I must admit I didn't get anywhere near as much reading in as I wanted to yesterday, but.. it was very good to start the second Charlie Berlin book.
From the Blurb:
Karen Chisholm
It's a tricky choice this one - I've got a couple of other books that have recently arrived, written by local authors that I desperately want to read - but this is next month's bookclub book, and I love those discussions - and I want to have read this book and had some time to think about it. So it's jumping in front of a couple of other ones and I've got my fingers crossed for a cold weekend (given up even contemplating the vague possibility of rain).
From the Blurb:
Karen Chisholm
The first 20 Sisters in Crime members to submit a review of any women’s crime or mystery crime novel will win a copy of Jaye Ford’s new chilling suspense novel, Scared Yet?, kindly donated by Random House.
You can enter the competition here
Karen Chisholm
Okay, well I make no bones about the fact that the arrival of an R.J. Ellory book means that it jumps ... straight to the top of the pile. No hestitation whatsoever.
From the Blurb:
How long can a man escape judgement? A dark and atmospheric thriller from the award-winning author of A Quiet Belief in Angels.
It should have all been so easy for Vincent Madigan. Take four hundred grand from the thieves who stole it in the first place and who could they turn to for help?
Karen Chisholm
It's embarrassing, how far behind you can get. Especially when it involves a very favourite author.
From the Blurb:
People are disappearing in Christchurch.
Cooper Riley, a psychology professor, doesn’t make it to work one day.
Emma Green, one of his students, doesn’t make it home.
Karen Chisholm
Science made actually interesting. A minor miracle in my experience. (There is real science in this book delightfully "illustrated" by classic Discworld machinations).
From the Blurb:
The wizards discover to their cost that it’s no easy task to change history.
Karen Chisholm
Winner of the German Critics Award in 2004 and the Spanish Premier Special Director's Award Semana Negra in 2007, that pedigree alone seems as good a reason as any to have a look at this. But that doesn't make allowances for the setting which is fascinating, and the style which is an interesting combination of descriptive, lyrical noir.
From the Blurb:
Karen Chisholm
F2F Bookclub read for discussion in May - found this much more interesting than I was expecting - should be a very very good bookclub meeting!
From the Blurb:
When his fiancée breaks off their engagement, Patrick Oxtoby leaves home and moves to a boarding house in a seaside town. But in spite of his hopes and determination to build a better life, nothing goes to plan and Patrick is soon driven to take a desperate and chilling course of action.
Karen Chisholm
A new Australian author is always a very happy event in this house, and one who comes from the Central Goldfields has an even nicer feel to it (it's always good to see a local show up, and Castlemaine is not that far from our neck of the woods!)
From the Blurb:
Everyone is hooked on something.
It's not that easy to kick the money habit. After the world meltdown forces London's bankers to go cold turkey, people look elsewhere for a quick quid: the old fashioned East End.
Karen Chisholm
I shouldn't really complain that this is another series that I'm behind with as the option of so many wonderful books to read really does spoil one for choice!
From the Blurb:
Ex-cop Vincent Ruiz rescues a young woman from a violent boyfriend but wakes next morning to find that she's robbed him. It was a set up – an elaborate scam. Setting out to find Holly Knight, Ruiz discovers her boyfriend's tortured body and realises that powerful men are looking for the same girl. What did she steal that was so important?
Karen Chisholm
I'm very very behind with reviews at the moment. Mostly because I've been having a lot of fun with website - the latest of which we're really chuffed about.
Dougal the Giant Black and White Kitten has his own website!
http://www.dougalsdiary.com.au(link is external)
Joining his fanclub means that you can chat directly to Dougal, plus you'll get a discount pressie :)
Karen Chisholm
Okay, I'm bowing to peer pressure. There's only so long you can work on somebody's website (http://www.margaretaosborn.com.au(link is external)) and watch the phenomena that has been BELLA'S RUN, before you just have a sneaking suspicion you might be missing out on something. Now I don't normally read romance, so I'm way outside my comfort zone here - but really everyone has been talking about this book!
From the Blurb:
Karen Chisholm
Why oh why oh why have I waited so long to pick up this book....
From the Blurb:
Karen Chisholm
I've been looking forward to this one.
From the Blurb:
The body of a seventeen-year-old girl has been found covered in wildflowers on a hillside in the Drakensberg Mountains, near Durban. She is the daughter of a Zulu chief, destined to fetch a high bride price. Was Amahle as innocent as her family claims, or is her murder a sign that she lived a secret life?
Karen Chisholm
A little bit of a palate cleanser before I start on the much anticipated Silent Valley by Malla Nunn!
From the Blurb:
The portly Vish Puri is India’s most accomplished detective, at least in his own estimation, and is also the hero of an irresistible new mystery series set in hot, dusty Delhi. Puri’s detective skills are old-fashioned in a Sherlock Holmesian way and a little out of sync with the tempo of the modern city, but Puri is clever and his methods work.
Karen Chisholm
I've actually been dipping into this book for a little while now, so this is more of a Just Finished, than a Currently Reading.
From the Blurb:
They broke free from their workstations and ran giggling down the factory hallways, stopping only to scrawl crude missives on the walls. Transcribed here for your amusement, the most original voices in crime fiction from around the world offer you 27 tales of revulsion, hearbreak and violence.
Karen Chisholm
Because I'm so disorganised I've read the first and third books in this series, missing the second up til now. Which is just plain daft as I simply love these books.
From the Blurb:
Karen Chisholm
Read for f2fbook club.
From the Blurb:
How much of ourselves must we give up to help a friend in need?
Helen has little idea what lies ahead - and what strength she must summon - when she offers her spare room to an old friend, Nicola, who has arrived in the city for treatment of her illness. Skeptical of the medical establishment, and placing all her faith in an alternative health center, Nicola is determined to find her own way to cope, regardless of the advice Helen offers.
Karen Chisholm
Been hearing whispers about this book :)
From the Blurb:
Poets had always lived there, the locals claimed. It was as if the house called to its own...
When Sadie inherits Poet's Cottage in the Tasmanian fishing town of Pencubitt, she sets out to discover all she can about her notorious grandmother, Pearl Tatlow. Pearl was a children's writer who scandalised 1930s Tasmania with her behaviour. She was also violently murdered in the cellar of Poet's Cottage and her murderer never found.
Karen Chisholm
Just noticed this announcement, and have to say I'm very pleased to see The Precipice by Virginia Duigan on the list. I found it most fascinating when I read it.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-03-28/miles-franklin-long-list-announced...
Karen Chisholm
Felt the need for something from the lighter side, so from that pile, and the pile of books that I've had lurking in these parts for way too long...
From the Blurb:
Karen Chisholm
New thriller from new author with a long line of credits to do with screenplays and the like.
From the Blurb:
Darian Richards promised one too many victims' families he's find the answers they needed. After sixteen years as the head of Victoria's Homicide Squad he'd had enough. Retiring to Noosa he hoped paradise would drive the nightmares away. He should have realised, no place is safe.
Karen Chisholm
From the Blurb:
In 1993, the unthinkable happened – a serial killer began killing young women on the streets around Frankston. Read the incredible story about the hunt and capture of Paul Denyer, the 21-year-old responsible, and the lives that were ruined as a result of his crimes.
Karen Chisholm
My second thriller from Australian Author Honey (H.M.) Brown
From the Blurb:
It's only by chance that Trudy and Bruce Harrison notice the isolated ocean view gallery on their way home from holiday ... It's not listed on any tourist pamphlet. There are no other visitors. Within the maze of rooms the couple begins to feel uneasy. They are right to. The next few hours will rip them from their safe, comfortable existence forever.
Karen Chisholm
Ahem.... theatre review. Good grief, another opinion... but really we were fortunate enough last night to see Miriam Margolyes in Dickens' Women at Her Majesty's Theatre in Ballarat and just have to say SOMETHING about it.
Karen Chisholm
Excuse this small bit of personal indulgence, but it's been so exciting that I just have to say how excited and thrilled I am for Margareta Osborn.
Having been fortunate to work with Margareta on her website (http://www.margaretaosborn.com.au(link is external)) - which was the best fun - you can't imagine the thrill of knowing that her new book BELLA'S RUN - is selling like hotcakes.
Karen Chisholm
Right up front... very twitchy about this book. I am no particular fan of woo woo so it's got to be very very well done for me to be comfortable. But, when it works, I've had a few books which I did not expect to like, that turned out to be amongst my favourites.
Karen Chisholm
Okay, so I needed to look / check through an ARC as part of the course that I'm doing at the moment. So I grabbed the first one I found on MtTBR (aka the Retirement Pile). Seemed like a good plan, except now I can't put the thing down. I'm not SUPPOSED to be reading...
From the Blurb:
The FBI are worried about Keye Street.
She's a superb criminal profiler, with two university degrees and has been a rising star with the organisation. She's also attractive, tough and has brilliant instincts when it comes to reading criminal minds.
Karen Chisholm
From the Blurb:
A Powerful blend of biography and the detective novel, HUCKSTEPP investigates the murder of a charismatic woman who has fascinated Australians since she first appeared on national television to accuse New South Wales detectives of shooting her boyfriend, Warren Lanfranchi, in cold blood.
Throughout her short life, Sallie-Ann Huckstepp lived a dangerous existence. This is a true story of a woman who spoke out against corruption and murder.
Karen Chisholm
I need another category / pile - for goodness sake hurry up and read these books!
From the Blurb:
Danny 'Badger' Baxter has a talent for surveillance.
But now Badger has a bigger job than photographing dissident Republicans in muddy Ulster fields, or Islamic extremists on rainswept Yorkshire moors.
MI6 have a plan to assassinate the Engineer - a brilliant maker of Improvised Explosive Devices, the roadside bombs which account for 80% of British casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Karen Chisholm
I'm picking this one up with a little reservation as, in earlier books in the series, I've really struggled with the central character Annika Bengtzon. We'll see.
From the Blurb:
AN ACCIDENTAL DEATH?
Reporter Annika Bengtzon is working on the story of a devastating crime when she hears that a journalist investigating the same incident has been killed. It appears to be a hit-and-run accident.
Karen Chisholm
Interesting perspective.
From the Blurb:
What was it like for Mary-Ann Hodge to be married to Mark 'Chopper' Read? How was Joe Korp's former girlfriend Tania Herman persuaded to try to kill his wife Maria? And why did hairdresser Sylvia Bruno fall for Melbourne gangland killer Nikolai 'The Bulgarian' Radev?
Karen Chisholm
Don't forget, for those in Melbourne and nearer surrounds Crime Factory's launch is on 5th March. Sounds like it will be "one hell of a night"!
Karen Chisholm
From the blast from the past pile, I remember reading this book when it first came out in 1991 so a reread to discuss here.
From the Blurb:
'You can never be too thin or too rich,' said Wallis Simpson, Duchess of WIndsor.
But Francesca Miles, independent feminist detective, disagrees. When one of the richest men in Sydney is found dead in his penthouse she teams up with Inspector Joe Barnaby in a mystery that follows the trials and tribulations of a family that should have everything money can buy.
Karen Chisholm
Another entry in the Lachlan Fox series.
From the Blurb:
Water. It promises to be to the 21st century what oil was to the 20th ... and some people will do anything to control it.
Karen Chisholm
Third book in the DI Mark Tartaglia series.
From the Blurb:
Bestselling novelist Joe Logan walks out into a hot summer's evening in central London. The next day his body is found dumped in a disused Victorian crypt at the Brompton Cemetery. He has been tied up, shot, and castrated. The killing has the hallmarks of a professional hit. But what had Logan done to deserve such a brutal end?
Karen Chisholm
True Crime for a change.
From the Blurb:
In January 2010, a law-abiding, church-going father of two from Melbourne's leafy eastern suburbs steps off a plane and disappears. An intense police investigation uncovers the shocking truth: Herman Rockefeller met with a pair of swingers - an alcoholic single mum and her rubbish-collector boyfriend - and the visit cost him his life.
Karen Chisholm
Gee, what a surprise.... another series I'm behind with, and now I suspect I'm all out of order over as well....
From the Blurb:
Gus Dury is a changed man. He is off the Edinburgh streets and back with estranged wife, Debs. He has promised her that he won't get involved in any more dodgy cases which the police can't or won't solve.
Above all, he's off the drink. In his pocket at all times is a half bottle of scotch, but although the label is worn to shreds, he has never so much as loosened the cap.
Karen Chisholm
Another book from the "new to me author" pile, which coincides with the "been sitting here too long pile".
From the Blurb:
Obliged to leave New York City in the aftermath of his previous mission, ex-Royal Navy Intelligence agent David Trevellyan is summoned to the British Consulate in Chicago. To the same office where, just a week before, his new handler was attacked and shot by an operative gone bad.
Karen Chisholm
I've been meaning to read this book by Victorian rural author Honey Brown (and not just because she's another Victorian Rural Woman!) for ages, but the arrival of her second book was a substantial reminder!
From the Blurb:
Shannon and Rohan Scott have retreated to their family's cabin in the Australian bush to escape a virus-ravaged world. After months of isolation, Shannon imagines there's nothing he doesn't know about his older brother, or himself - until a stranger slips under their late night watch and past their loaded guns.
Karen Chisholm
Cora Bender killed a man. But why? What could have caused this quiet, lovable young mother to stab a stranger in the throat, again and again, until she was pulled off his body? For the local police it was an open-and-shut case. Cora confessed; there was no shortage of proof or witnesses. But Police Commissioner Rudolf Grovian refused to close the file and began his own maverick investigation. So begins the slow unraveling of Cora’s past, a harrowing descent into a woman’s private hell.
Karen Chisholm
Felt badly in need of something pointed, dark ...
From the Blurb:
Somewhere in the teeming heart of London is a man on a lethal mission. His cause: a long-overdue lesson on the importance of manners. When a man gives a public tongue-lashing to a misbehaving child, or a parking lot attendent is rude to a series of customers, the "Manners Killer" makes sure that the next thing either sees is the beginning of his own grisly end.
Karen Chisholm
Bought to us by the pile "New Authors":
From the Blurb:
Early one morning in Paris, the tranquility of the Sorbonne University is shattered by a death. But why would Albert Cadas, a quiet, crumpled professor of medieval literature, have any reason to kill himself? Meanwhile, Valentine Savi, a talented young restorer, receives a visit from an enigmatic elderly gentleman with a unique commission: to restore a priceless manuscript whose time-worn pages promise to reveal the truth of a mystery that has fascinated scholars and writers for centuries.
Karen Chisholm
I think I need to have a stamp made "Another Series I'm Behind With"....
From the Blurb:
Istanbul: the sight that greets Inspector Cetin Ikmen is horrific. The girl was burnt alive in her own bedroom. Was it suicide or muder? When her father shows no emotion at the death of his seventeen-year-old daughter, Ikmen starts to dig deeper.
Karen Chisholm
The problem with so much good crime fiction being available these days, is that if you're not careful, a favourite series can get left behind. And I've not be nearly careful enough!
So over the weekend, when it was another of those stinking hot, windy, hellish, dry as a chip weekends... I did some catching up.
From the Blurb:
Karen Chisholm
Been looking forward to this - there's been a few local authors recently who have turned me into a historical crime fan... who would have thought!
From the Blurb:
A compelling new series about Dr Dody McCleland, the first female autopsy surgeon.
A woman. A doctor. A beastly science.
Karen Chisholm
Another one of those books I've been reading in the background for a while. True Crime.
From the Blurb:
Karen Chisholm
Yes, I know I said only books set in cold weather, but there's only so long you can wait...
From the Blurb:
On a searing summer's day paramedic Holly Garland rushes to an emergency to find a man collapsed with a bullet wound in the back of his head, CPR being performed by two bystanders, and her long-estranged brother Seth watching it all unfold.
Karen Chisholm
ABC TV's Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries starts here on February 24th - you can get some sneak previews now at their very beautiful website:
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/phrynefisher/(link is external)
See the cast of characters, as well as the trailer for the show.
Karen Chisholm
Okay - only minor mentions thus far of warm weather, droughts and lack of rain - which is just as well because this is, so far, a very interesting book.
From the Blurb:
Melbourne, 1919. Nurses returning from the Great War are once again risking their lives, this time putting themselves in the firing line of a deadly disease: the Spanish 'Flu.
Karen Chisholm
If you're interested in Australian Women Rural writers - then Margareta has listed some upcoming books on her new site:
http://www.margaretaosborn.com.au/(link is external)
Have a look and add the diary dates for new releases!
Karen Chisholm
If this stinking, awful, relentless heat doesn't stop soon you can expect to see me reading more from cold climes. And something with rain... seeing as we've had bugger all for months now.
From the Blurb:
In a flat near Reykjavik city centre, a young man lies dead in a pool of blood. There is no sign of a break-in: the only clues are a woman's purple shawl, found under the bed in the next room, and a vial of prescription drugs in the victim's pocket.